


Hidden in the Moments

by brilliant_or_insane



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (US TV 1954)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous John, Jealous Sherlock, M/M, Marion Crawford Watson, Mild Angst, Mutual Pining, Ronald Howard Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 13:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilliant_or_insane/pseuds/brilliant_or_insane
Summary: Last month I watched the 1954 Sherlock Holmes starring Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford, and I rather fell in love with it. While watching, I couldn’t help constructing my own interpretations/headcannons regarding how and when Holmes and Watson’s relationship developed during the series. Therefore, each chapter in this fic focuses on one or two key moments from an episode, moving through the series chronologically and attempting to get at what might be hidden behind the open smiles and eager adventuring and occasional covert glance. It is a story about how I imagine those moments affected the characters, and ultimately led to a relationship that at the time could not be confirmed on screen, however extravagantly it was implied.Although familiarity with the episodes would fill in the details, you do not need to watch the series for this fic to make sense. Whatever context you bring to the story, I hope you enjoy it!





	1. The Cunningham Heritage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter title corresponds to the episode to which the chapter's events refer, and as a result there may not be a clear correlation between the title and the contents of the chapter.

In one sense, Stamford was quite right. The man is strange. He is also intriguing, infuriating, compelling. He does the oddest things, things which by their nature invite query, and yet by all appearances he does not expect to be questioned. It all makes sense in his mind, and apparently he expects that to be sufficient cause for everyone else to take it in stride. That isn’t to say he doesn’t love sharing his discoveries; he’ll regale you to death with the results of his experiments with obscure Egyptian poisons. But if you ask why the deuce he put the stuff _in the teapot_ he'll assume a stern and, I swear to god, genuinely uncomprehending gaze—he’ll seem actually disappointed that anyone could bother with such trivialities when Egyptian poison is at stake.

But I _do_ ask him, and I _will_ ask him until my dying day (and yes I realize that assumes the idiot will outlive me, and so he will, because I may not have much power over what occurs in this cottage beyond damage control, but I am a goddamn doctor and that man isn’t going anywhere without me as long as I have air in my lungs to protest it). 

Back to the point, however—I _do_ ask, and I _will_ ask, because before I even met my companion I was determined that Stamford would be wrong about one thing: “Another strange thing about this Holmes,” he’d said, “… somehow one never thinks to question him.” Well, I decided right then, I will be the sort of man who questions him anyway, the sort of man who solves this enigma of an individual by sheer persistence, if nothing else.

God help me, I was halfway caught before I ever laid eyes on Sherlock Holmes.

 

* * *

 

I confess I was … inattentive when I first met John Watson. In my defense, I genuinely believed that I had made a discovery which would revolutionize police work, and so I had—it made a real difference once the blockheads at Scotland Yard finally paid it proper attention. Besides, my Watson can only manage one role, but in portraying that character he has proved is a consummate actor—not least because he’s half convinced himself of the act. By all appearances he is a dime-a-dozen hearty British gentleman, complete with good old-fashioned English values. The fact that he is a rebel who only needs a proper goal before he abandons all the conventions of his performative conservatism is a secret so well kept that some who have known him all his life have no inkling of it. So really, I couldn’t be expected to—

Nonsense. Of course I could and should have been. Seeing through facades is my business, and that crucial morning I was too distracted to take note of the best man I have ever met.

Fortunately my mind hadn’t deserted me entirely, and I must have formed some idea of the real man, for I was perfectly sincere that day in declaring myself delighted to meet him, and within forty-eight hours there was a case, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to drag him along when I broke into the murder’s home. Not that I gave it much conscious thought at time—I seldom do when I’m really absorbed by a challenge—but I thank every good thing in the world that I did it, because I suspect the excitement and danger was all that kept him from storming out of the flat for good those first few weeks. 

Besides, it is what happened there that finally snapped me out of my deuced inattentiveness. I am not fond of violence, but I value courage and skill and decency quite highly. So when Watson didn't flinch upon being held at gunpoint, nullified the threat with quick efficiency, and then instead of employing his apparently considerable skills against the new flatmate who had nearly gotten him killed, turned to me with mussed hair and a smile that was almost shy in its pleased eagerness for approval, I was lost before I knew I had begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire 1954 Sherlock Holmes series is available on YouTube here: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXzkWIMu_8&list=PLUCc9VQXrUms5O8T6LpGAui53UBX82bDq


	2. The Case of Lady Beryl

Now that things have worked themselves out so splendidly, I am beginning to find it amusing that I didn’t understand my own nature sooner. Of course it's all deucedly embarrassing, but one may as well laugh when one can. Why, I hadn’t passed a week in 221B before I was storming out of the house to defend Holmes's honor like some overzealous knight-errant. It is for the best that Lestrade is a decent bloke and readily agreed that the newspapers should be made to give Holmes the credit he deserves. I cannot say whether it is he or I who would have been in trouble otherwise, but one of us certainly would have been. Probably both of us, if I’m honest. I wonder what Holmes would have done if I had gotten myself in real trouble so early on? But that’s a silly question; he would have gotten me out of it because he is a good man and I was in a bind on his account. What I really want to know is what he would have _felt_ about it, that first week. I really do not know.

Ah well, at any rate, I wasn’t properly in love with Holmes yet. But I was barreling along at a rate which would have been most alarming, were I not unaware of the part of my nature which would allow me to love him in that way. To my mind he was a man, and therefore whatever I felt for him must be interest, friendship, even fascination, and later brotherly affection—anything but love.

 

* * *

 

I’ve always liked Wilkins. He’s a steady fellow, intelligent but eager to learn, and no show-off. Ha. Well, I suppose opposites do attract, as they say. But the man also has a subversive strain of humor and self-satisfaction which adds interest to his character. So, when he walked in saying something about a case whilst I was in the middle of an experiment regarding the medicinal potential of poisons, I scarcely registered his words. Instead I drew him in with a cup of tea, and within minutes had a ready listener and assistant in my experiment. And then there was the case, and as usual I was more concerned with impressing than being impressed. As a result, I was once again unforgivably slow to realize that Watson was being extraordinary.

If nothing else I ought to have noticed the way I had already fallen into treating him as a partner. It was he to whom I addressed my observations, he to whom I turned for a second opinion, he who I kept by my side when I wanted Lestrade out of the way. And when I accused the criminal in the absence of the police, I was factoring his skill and steadiness into that choice. I think that if anything had happened to him, even then, I might never have stopped feeling an inexplicable void in the space where I nearly had a trusted partner.

But in this instance my heart was outpacing my head. It was only when Watson finally stopped my frantic charge towards Baker Street, which I really believed I had blown up with my neglected experiments, and told me that he’d turned off the gas on the way out, that it all struck. By means of a chance recommendation I had been granted a man who in less than a week had accepted my oddities without passivity, embraced my work, inspired such confidence in Lestrade that he'd wheedled his way into a case quite on his own, saved my life and now saved me from involuntary manslaughter. I do believe I positively gaped at the man. Fortunately for my pride he put that down to shock—and in all fairness he may not have been entirely wrong—and put his arm around my shoulders as he led me gently home. Because naturally the man wouldn’t settle for everything else that made him a wonder. He had to go and be a healer, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire 1954 Sherlock Holmes series is available on YouTube here: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXzkWIMu_8&list=PLUCc9VQXrUms5O8T6LpGAui53UBX82bDq


	3. The Pennsylvania Gun

“Mad as march hares, that’s what you two are.”

The messenger boy’s announcement was not precisely a surprise. Still, there is a world of difference between knowing you are mad and having others see it, so I stiffened at the words. But then Holmes laughed, and in a moment I was chuckling myself, feeling as happy as I had in the whole of my life. 

Yes, I’d known I was mad since I was a young boy. I was too attracted to danger, too quickly bored by the amusements men of my station found so engaging, and not nearly interested enough in settling down with a wife. And so when Lestrade warned that if I didn’t stay away from Holmes I would soon be as mad as he, I could have informed him that it was rather too late to be worrying over my sanity. But I did not.

My parents, you see, were decent and affectionate folk, but rather firmly attached to social approbation. As such, my education was as much concerned with ‘proper’ behavior as mental development. And having discovered how much more kindly the world treats the conformist, I learned my lessons and played my role. It was not so painful as one might imagine; but neither was it patriotism alone that drew me into the army.

Don’t misunderstand, it isn’t all an act—I believe there is a great deal of use in many of our English customs, including: politeness (when employed without discrimination), respecting privacy, and reserving teapots solely for the brewing of tea, _not experimenting with Egyptian poisons_. 

Yet here I was, having lived with a fellow-madman for less than a week, and my facades were crumbling. I was badgering my flatmate into making an impromptu trip to Sussex because an interesting murder had been committed, assuming my presence would be wanted, and reciting train schedules as dutifully as good little boys recite the Bible. My lifelong disguise was evaporating, and the terror of being discovered at long last was being countered by laughter.

 

* * *

 

We were so absurdly happy, those early days. We may not have been indulging in the more acute delights of later years, but there was a freedom to the joy of those first blessed weeks, preceding the advent of anxieties and hidden hopes and quiet despair. At that time there was a peace at the heart of our madcap life which it would take many years and many promises to regain.

Yes, there was pain to come, but there was little premonition of it then. There was just two madmen who had fallen into one another’s lives and fit together without preamble. It was the eccentric detective dancing merrily for the endlessly surprising doctor who applauded and challenged and joined the dance with pre-emptive skill. It was Watson skillfully extracting us from every scrape into which I dragged us both. It was the quick pressure of his hand on mine as he caught sight of the culprit for whom we lay in wait, stretched out on the grass; a touch I valued for its very extraneousness without wondering why I cared.

With time and suffering we would discover the deeper satisfaction of hard-won joy; but first came the delights of second youth, when joy is easy and the shadow of loss is nearly—not quite—forgotten.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire 1954 Sherlock Holmes series is available on YouTube here:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXzkWIMu_8&list=PLUCc9VQXrUms5O8T6LpGAui53UBX82bDq


	4. The Belligerent Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay between chapters—I had exams these past two weeks. But I will have far too much free time during the next six weeks, so from now on I expect to be updating at a steady pace!

It’s a deuced bother when good memories get mixed up with ones you’d rather forget. I would be delighted to never again think about the time I took to believing in tangible ghosts, only Holmes _had_ to pick that day to confirm that my involvement in his work really had come to mean something.

Holmes had been an idiot, as usual, and gotten us into entirely unnecessary danger. I never will understand why he insists on our facing criminals ourselves when it would be perfectly easy to call for the police. But so he does, and thus I found myself in the already disturbingly familiar position of having to get a gun out of his face. But when I’d disarmed the (fortunately imbecilic) criminal and chided Holmes for getting us into the scrape, he said it: “my dear fellow, I have sublime confidence in your ability to extricate us from any predicament in which my rashness may place us.” 

Before that day I knew well enough that Holmes valued my company. He was, after all, continually requesting my presence on his excursions, if not simply assuming I would follow him. And I knew I had occasionally been of use. But, though I flatter myself I hid any insecurities rather well, it isn’t easy to feel really useful when your partner is a genius. For him to announce that he really did depend on my skills, that my competence was a factor in his plans—well, let’s just say there’s a reason I can still recite his little speech word-for-word.

All the same, I haven’t entirely forgiven him for making me believe I’d seen a ghost a second time—as if I hadn’t made myself foolish enough already! And _tweaking my nose_ into the bargain? Well that, frankly, was just unnecessary.

 

* * *

 

“my dear fellow, I have sublime confidence in your ability to extricate us from any predicament in which my rashness may place us.” 

I did have confidence; oh how I did! From the day a highly intelligent and well-trained army doctor moved into my flat and began accompanying me on cases, I felt and behaved as if we were invincible. And if that confidence had been temporarily shaken when I got him held at gunpoint that first night, it was only strengthened a moment later when he took the danger in stride and efficiently nullified the threat.

I hardly know whether I feel guilty or nostalgic for that time. The fact is that I often put us in a tight spot when I might have summoned the police instead, simply because after so many years of working alone I delighted in the phenomena of just the two of us facing all comers. I wanted to put on a properly staged performance for Watson as I unveiled the solution, and I was (and am) perhaps overly fond of watching his competence in facing any difficulty. That isn’t to say I was exactly comfortable when guns came into play, but I quickly realized that with a flow of deductions I could keep the criminal’s attention and weapon trained on myself, giving Watson the space to employ a strategy and disarm them. Even on Watson’s off days, such as that time he took to believing in corporeal ghosts, any lingering anxiety caused by the volatility of firearms was far outweighed by the blithe and intoxicating certainty that my Watson would get us out of it somehow. And he did. He always has.

If I later became less sanguine in the face of danger, it was by no means due to a reduction of my confidence in Watson, which only deepened with time. Rather it came from a growing awareness of the potentially devastating effects of ill-luck, and of my own—

But that story will come later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire 1954 Sherlock Holmes series is available on YouTube here:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXzkWIMu_8&list=PLUCc9VQXrUms5O8T6LpGAui53UBX82bDq


	5. The Shy Ballerina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As will become apparent, in this fic I am writing Watson as gay, not bi. As I general rule I definitely read Watson as bi, so I hesitated over this choice. However, in the 1954 adaptation Watson's statements of romantic/physical attraction to women are so entirely performative, and he is so deeply uncomfortable with actual interactions that imply romantic involvement with women, that reading him as gay felt truer to this series.

I don’t recall a great deal about the case I called  _The Adventure of the Shy Ballerina_. Frankly, I don’t even recall the ballerina being shy, and Holmes may have been correct in calling that particular title nonsensical. It was, however, the first case we tackled together in which the perpetrator was a women, and thus it was the first time my companion’s considerable powers were trained on a female—

But no, that’s not it. Holmes treated her quite as he did any other murderer, and after all there had been female clients and suspects involved in former cases. It was only, I suspect, that I was watching him rather more closely that day.

You see, previously Holmes had not shown the slightest romantic interest in woman. I found it a relief, honestly—I can admire a pretty face, but my interest never seemed to equal that of other men, and I confess that at times I grew weary of women's physical attractions as a constant topic among male acquaintance. At the time I had not dismissed the theoretical possibility of marrying a woman at some point in the future; but why we should all jabber on about it in the absence of any definite prospects was something I never could understand. Feeling no need to bother with the pretense around Holmes was therefore something of a release.

And so if I experienced a measure of distress the morning before the ballerina case when Holmes offhandedly designated females the more fascinating sex, I was ready to understand it merely as annoyance at the possibility of having to re-adopt that particular facade. And if I watched his interactions with females a little more closely that I was normally wont that day, I believed I was merely attempting to gage whether or how much I must adjust my own behavior in the future to avoid … well, in all frankness, at the time I don’t think I could have clearly identified just what I was so eager to hide.

For the record, it was six months before he again made any similar comment, and if I later found myself adjusting my own behavior, it was for other reasons entirely.

 

* * *

 

I may have been a little slow to recognize what Watson was quickly becoming to me, but in a general sense I knew my proclivities well enough. Thus there was a distinct edge of danger added to the already mildly precarious circumstance of two bachelors sharing rooms—a danger that in some ways must only increase with each year we continue to spend together in that manner. And I already fully intended to spend quite as many years with the man as I could manage.

So, more personal feelings aside, it is natural that I watched eagerly for anything that might aid me in deducing his inclinations, and wondered with a fervor edging ever nearer to obsession how he might respond if by an ill chance he discovered my own preferences. His outward knee-jerk alignment with the norm boded ill for me; but I reasoned that his deeper loyalty to a justice not dictated by the winds of social preference just _might_ … Still, I felt I would be a great deal more secure if he were simply one of my own sort. 

My speculations on that score were inconclusive, but encouraging. The fact was that Watson did not seem especially preoccupied with women. We had encountered a fair share of attractive ladies during the month or so he had been living with me, and seldom if ever had I seen him address them with anything besides gentlemanly respect or easy friendliness. I had seven alternate theories for why this might be the case, but in spite of myself I was growing increasingly hopeful that the true explanation might be the one I desired.

So when I gathered my courage and took advantage of some factoids regarding female tigers to make a broad and nonsensical comment about females being more fascinating than males, his noncommittal grunt added considerably to my increasing hope. And if I ignored the fact that my reaction held as much joy as relief, I can at least say for myself that the monumental self-deception of the past month was nearly drawn to its close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire 1954 Sherlock Holmes series is available on YouTube here:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXzkWIMu_8&list=PLUCc9VQXrUms5O8T6LpGAui53UBX82bDq


End file.
